| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: and no doubt I deserved the snubbing I got. "Never be excited,
my dears, about anything," shall be the advice I will give
the three babies when the time comes to take them out to parties,
"or, if you are, don't show it. If by nature you are volcanoes,
at least be only smouldering ones. Don't look pleased,
don't look interested, don't, above all things, look eager.
Calm indifference should be written on every feature of your faces.
Never show that you like any one person, or any one thing.
Be cool, languid, and reserved. If you don't do as your
mother tells you and are just gushing, frisky, young idiots,
snubs will be your portion. If you do as she tells you,
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: ashamed of your name why are you so loath to part with it?"
"Y'u didn't ask me my name," he said, a dark flush sweeping his
face.
"I ask it now."
Like the light from a snuffed candle the boyish recklessness had
gone out of his face. His jaws were set like a vise and he looked
hard as hammered steel.
"My name is Bannister," he said, coldly.
"Ned Bannister, the outlaw," she let slip, and was aware of a
strange sinking of the heart.
It seemed to her that something sinister came to the surface in
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if asked
anything, he would sit and think - and think, and if he did not
know it, 'my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all - FOI, IL NE VOUS
LE DIRA PAS': which is certainly a very high degree of caution.
At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth
full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a
time when he had said or done something memorable; and I noticed
that Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries. She herself was
not boastful in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing
the child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling
all that was fortunate in his little existence. No schoolboy could
|
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: of the type dubbed elegant. That was about all he had seen.
There was nothing statuesque in her; all was nervous motion.
She was mobile, living, yet a painter might not have called her
handsome or beautiful. But the much that she was surprised him.
She was quite a long way removed from the rusticity that was his.
How could one of his cross-grained, unfortunate, almost accursed
stock, have contrived to reach this pitch of niceness? London had
done it, he supposed.
From this moment the emotion which had been accumulating in his breast
as the bottled-up effect of solitude and the poetized locality he dwelt in,
insensibly began to precipitate itself on this half-visionary form;
Jude the Obscure |
